So, let’s suppose your past that, you have your domain, and your blog all set up. Now it’s content time…

…Ahh the last missing piece, so let me just open up my laptop and start writing, you may think to yourself..

but really is that all there is to it? just write whatever comes out of your fingers?

and what if you aren’t the “writing type”? are you doomed to late nights banging your head against the keyboard slurping down cups of coffee trying to find that one shred of inspiration for your next blog post?

To answer your questions: No, no, and well maybe – but more than likely no.

Should you have a writing strategy: yes, but your strategy doesn’t have to include all that blogging mumbo jumbo that you hear about like SEO, Keyword density, back-linking, blah blah blah…

Here is the big secret that will guarantee success:

Consistency.

It does not matter if you write 1 really great super optimized post per month, the consistent act of writing every day will win over that every time.

It’s a concept I like to call brute force blogging. and it really is how people make blogging work. Lets face facts – if you try to learn every tip and technique before you start you will never start blogging!

So here is the key, just write. Every day. Set aside 30-60 minutes whenever you feel most creative (for me it’s late night) turn off everything and write for that time period. When your done, post it.

I will tell you first hand the first couple days will be easy, and then you will have a few days of “uhg! I don’t want to do this (insert explicitive)”

…but then something magical happens – you will start seeing results and your traffic increase, and this my friend should get you very excited.

at this point, which will be between 2 weeks and 6 weeks in you can pick up that blog course on how to optimize your posts for search engine rankings, or you can start playing around with posting up to new, different sharing sites.

Its only after you have made blogging a habit that you should worry about tweaking and making your posts stronger!

Start writing. Commit to it for at least 60 days, write every day at least one post, even if it’s small

After you have gotten that far and built the habit then you can grow into new avenues, optimizing your email list, building a facebook fan page, start video blogging with youtube, etc…

Send me an email or comment and let me know how it’s going.

~Blaine

PS. I forgot to mention something for those of you who hate to write. If you happen to have a little bit of extra cash you can check out 99centarticles.com – they do a really good job, I’ve used them many times in the past. Just keep in mind this is not as good as just writing them yourself, but I know how some of us loath writing

Recently, I have been asked over and over: “Blaine, how can I make videos at home that look and sound great, is easy to do and won’t break the bank”

And if your not asking this its for one of two reasons:

You already know how to do this

You don’t understand how important it is to leverage the power of video in today’s fast paced world.

Now, if you don’t know why you need video, just look around at what the “gurus” are doing in the industry – that’s right they ALL use video, and most of them have it on their sales pages. Why? you may ask..

They Use Video Because it Literally Forces People To Pay Attention And Buy What Your Promoting

Ok, enough of that lets get into the good stuff…

You really only need about 3 basic things to get started doing video at home (or wherever you prefer to shoot):

An HD Camera:

Yes, in today’s world and with the price of electronics I would recommend nothing less than HD. The Camera that I suggest to most people is the Kodak Zi8 Pocket Camera.

I reccomend the Zi8 for many reasons:

It’s small and easy to take with you anywhere

It is extremely affordable ($100-$200) – to compare, a camera with this quality 5-10 years ago would have cost you in the tens of thousands of dollars

There are a ton of accessories

It has an SD memory card slot, meaning if you want to shoot all day, just buy a couple extra memory cards

Extra Media Cards (SD cards for the Zi8)

You will always want to carry at least two with you and with how affordable they are now its not a problem to do that. Plus if you run out you can get them practically anywhere.

Find a bunch here, the general rule of thumb is you want at least 2gb but at the time of writing this the 8gb card are the best amount of space for money

A Decent Microphone

My friend Glenn Arcaro (the Hollywood video guy) has told me time and time again that people care much more about your auido than video. If you have subpar audio they will leave your vid. If your video is subpar but your audio sounds great they will stay and watch.

A Tripod

Really, any tripod will work alright, I personally have a full sized one and a gorillapod style small one.

A note on tripods: Yes you can easily spend $1500 or more on a tripod (like this manfrotto), but unless your shooting professional video there really is no reason. My thinking is by a cheap one (maybe a second for a backup) if your traveling and forget it or it breaks or is stolen, who cares! It was $20. And at the end of the day the $20 one does the exact same job as the $1500 one – holds your camera steady.

Total: $300-$400 depending on the prices you get for things.

Blaine, That Set Up Is Great but I want something even better!

Well luckily I have a few upgrades you may want to look at to make you even more professional (and still stay under $1000)

…But before I continue I must warn you – when you get all the cool toys figured out and start seeing the results you have with video you will be spending more time doing it and probably have to upgrade your computer and hard drives to handle all the footage, the results you get from video make it addictive 🙂

Home Studio Stage 2:

A lighting/Backdrop package:

Triple Light Kit

Now there are more options than you can shake a stick at with this. But considering were on a budget, I’m going to recommend some great products that I have tried out myself.

Cowboy Studios Makes a Ton of great starter packages at incredible prices. I recommend a 3 light setup with at least a couple backdrops (Chroma Key Green, Black, White) and if your studio will stay in one room most of the time, get a backdrop mount:

A Wireless Mic:

Ok, so you don’t NEED a wireless mic but they are really handy, especially if you want to walk away from the camera a bit. I will give you two options, budget and Pro Quality. If you can easily afford the better one it is worth the money.

A Good Backup Hard drive:

You will want to get an external hard drive that can store your video and it MUST have redundancy (meaning if one of the drives fail there is another to keep your data safe) I have about 6 in my office at the moment, but I definitely must say the g-drives are quite amazing, and a 2-4 terabyte will do fine for most people.:

So that is my main list, and of course as technology improves and time goes on I’m sure it will need to be modified and updated, but I can tell you as of writing this the above setup will get you going and you can easily do it for under $1000, if you add in the lights, backdrop and a good hard drive your right at $1000

How many times have we seen a headline like this on an information product? Probably more than we can count…

However, most of us deep down don’t really care about being rich, I can’t say for myself or any of my closest friends we have a love affair with money, sure maybe once it would be fun to get a few thousand in cash throw it out on the bed and roll around in it while belting out an evil laugh “Muhahahahaha” but that would only be fun once 🙂

The real thing we strive for is the life money can buy, the nice house, trips, the ability to pickup the tab when you take your friends and family out to the nicest place in town…

But let’s dig a little deeper, although it will be nice being able to have great things what most of us are really striving for is money so we can help those around us, maybe it’s been your hard working parents dream their whole life to have a beach house and retire to soak in the sun and go fishing every day, yet we know given some of the current economic situations that may never happen for a lot of them – which is where you having money comes in.

If you have children I could think of no better joy then being able to provide them with the life an opportunities you may not have been provided with – No, I don’t believe children should be spoiled constantly and given everything on a silver platter, but if you can provide them the opportunities and educate them at a young age then think of how they can change the world for the better.

So, this leads us back to money, you really do need it to accomplish a lot of the grand ideas and plans you may have, but maybe that seems easier said than done. With so many get rich quick information products and systems out there its easy to get lost in the shuffle and really end up just going in circles spending more than you ever make back.

Money is not the goal, nor is it something to really strive for – Money is primarily a metric, a means to measure the progress of your success in that area of you life.

Let’s resolve to make a plan:

My thought to you is start thinking today what you want the future to look like 5 and 10 years down the road, vision it out in pain staking detail, even get out your journal (you have a journal right?) and write down your vision. I personally like to write mine as a story from the minuet I wake up feeling the sun on my face and the warm ocean breeze flowing over my bed, until I lay my head down later that night.

After you have your vision at least thought through we are going to map it, and that will be in the next episode.